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News
‘Standard’ drink size varies wildly worldwide
The definition of the size of a ‘standard drink’ varies wildly across the world, according to new research, giving drinkers a confusing picture of how to drink safely.
The World Health Organization defines a standard drink as 10 g. (grams) of pure ethanol, with both men and women advised not to exceed 2 standard drinks per day.
However, according to a report just published in the scientific journal Addiction, in individual countries the size of a standard drink can vary by as much as 250%, with the smallest in Iceland and the UK (8 g.), and the largest in Austria (20 g.).
Researchers looked at seventy-five countries and found that only thirty-seven of them (less than 50%) provided any definitions of drink size. For those countries that did, the WHO’s definition of a standard drink is the one most often cited, but 50% of countries with drinking guidelines don’t use it.
In Chile, for example, drinkers can take 56 g. per day and still be defined as at low-risk.
Meanwhile – in line with the UK’s advice – Australia, Canada, Denmark, Fiji, France, Mexico, New Zealand, and Poland all offer guidelines allowing you to drink more on special occasions.
The UK’s recently changed guidelines which make the same intake recommendations for men and women bring the country into line with Australia, Grenada, Portugal, and South Africa, but many others still offer separate guidelines for each of the sexes.
Co-author of the report Keith Humphreys of Stanford University School of Medicine in the USA says the inconsistencies mean there’s a substantial chance for misunderstanding.
He said: “A study of the health effects of low-risk drinking in France could be misinterpreted by researchers in the United States who may use a different definition of drinking levels. Inconsistent guidelines are also likely to increase scepticism among the public about their accuracy. It is not possible that every country is correct; maybe they are all wrong.”
Almost like the stupid use of that wonderfully non-scientific, non-standard measure of “the teaspoon” when it comes to sugar. We should be using straight grams or preferable mLs of pure ethanol equivalent with a recommendation based on that. After all if the guide is to consume no more than say 24 mL of ethanol per day and the label on a bottle says this contains, for argument sake 51 mL of ethanol then it is easily apparent that a little under half a bottle will meet that guideline. Then countries can set their own recommended daily maximum. The of mL rather than grams means that there would be no need to change the current practice of alcohol declarations being almost universally v/v, not g/100 mL. Already we have the situation of a consumer having say a beer with 0.9 std drinks in a serve followed by the consumption of wine from a bottle with say 6.8 std drinks. This is no simpler than working on mLs of ethanol.
Also it gets around the problem of alcohol labelling wine in some countries where the standard drinks label has to be accurate to within say, 0.1, while the actual alcohol level can be declared at say 13.1% v/v but in fact be as low as 12 or as high as 14.3% v/v. Why have such an artificially tight constraint on the std drinks declaration when the true alcohol level can make a mockery of that because it can have a variance of say almost 10% of the declared value.